Resto Stats

Hey!
Im abit new to the whole resto specc and Im wondering abit about the stats. Ive read on some forums/guides about the haste soft cap, some say its 12.5% and some are saying 8.5% so im a bit confused.
Another thing i would like to get answered is how much Mastery should I aim for? Currently im at around 55%.

Haste: go for 2017 for now (assuming you don't have the talent that grants a passive 5% haste). Its kinda surprising that this expansion didn't raise the haste cap by much. I mean I know it was 913 for the first haste cap at 85, but I always went for the second cap of 2002. Anyway, level 90 haste should be 2017.

Spirit: It cannot be said enough: regen is our most important thing this expansion, and spirit is our primary regen stat since int no longer scales our mana pool. I am aiming for 9K spirit, but currently only have around 5,400 unbuffed (gonna do my first MGV tomorrow!). Never reforge out of spirit and always reforge into spirit for pieces that don't have any. Also, always gem for spirit.

Mastery: Our next important stat. Always get as much as you can get. There is no such thing as too much mastery.

Crit is always good too, but should not be our main focus right now. Get it where you can, and don't worry when you can't. Mastery is where its at for secondary stats (I consider spirit a primary stat, but it kinda is a secondary stat isn't it?)

I hope this info helps some.

Here is a link to my armory. I am one of the lead healers for my guild, but by no means are we hardcore. That doesn't mean I don't know what I am talking about though 8P.

Haste - 817 soft cap with AS +5% Raid buff, 2nd soft cap is 3764 which is a little out of reach atm.
Mastery - 50% anymore will suffer diminishing returns and as a result will mean crit overtakes it as a preferred secondary.
Spirit - as much as you possibly can. I'm currently at 9200 ish fully buffed and i want more.

Haste - 817 soft cap with AS +5% Raid buff, 2nd soft cap is 3764 which is a little out of reach atm.
Mastery - 50% anymore will suffer diminishing returns and as a result will mean crit overtakes it as a preferred secondary.
Spirit - as much as you possibly can. I'm currently at 9200 ish fully buffed and i want more.

There is a sticky at the top of the shaman forum with all the information you may ever need.

The above soft haste cap of 2017 is IF you have AS talented but no 5% haste buff and only applies to RT and Earth Shield iirc.

glhf

Pulled my info straight from the stickied resto guide on this forum for haste. For my raid, yes 2017 is what I am supposed to go for. It may not be the same in every situation, but benefits me the most. My raid has the 5% haste buff and I am not specced into AS.

Considering you agree with me on spirit and the information you provided about mastery is only slightly different than mine I don't understand how you can say I "misinformed" anyone. Please explain.

Mathematically there is. If you were for example to take a character that had 10% crit and 150% mastery, the hp breakpoint moves down to 50% from 67%.

But here's the thing you need to understand about how diminishing returns work. It's not linear, it's exponential. Meaning it takes a fuckton of stacking one stat before you see diminishing returns. But once you start to see diminishing returns, woo boy, does it ever grow fast past that.

Regardless it's a moot point. In game thanks to secondary stats scaling from gear, you never reach a point where diminishing returns really occurs.

edit: As for mastery being far less useful than crit, how exactly?? you are aware mastery has increasing returns vs crit the more you stack right? (assuming you're healing someone under a breakpoint?)

Afaik, in regard to "As for mastery being far less useful than crit, how exactly?? (assuming you're healing someone under a breakpoint?)", Mastery beyond 50% becomes less valuable, so much so that crit overtakes it.

If i'm very wrong my sincere apologies. But from what i've read once you reach 50% mastery, it becomes faaar less important.

This is taken directly from the link you provided. "At lvl 90 we start with 39% fixed mastery so its easier than ever to bump that number at 45%-50%. Aim for those levels before you start reforging what is left to crit (although you will soon discover that you will reach them by default through gear upgrades and you will reach a point where you can't possibly reforge down from there). "

This is taken directly from the link you provided. "At lvl 90 we start with 39% fixed mastery so its easier than ever to bump that number at 45%-50%. Aim for those levels before you start reforging what is left to crit (although you will soon discover that you will reach them by default through gear upgrades and you will reach a point where you can't possibly reforge down from there). "

Haste: go for 2017 for now (assuming you don't have the talent that grants a passive 5% haste). Its kinda surprising that this expansion didn't raise the haste cap by much. I mean I know it was 913 for the first haste cap at 85, but I always went for the second cap of 2002. Anyway, level 90 haste should be 2017.

Spirit: It cannot be said enough: regen is our most important thing this expansion, and spirit is our primary regen stat since int no longer scales our mana pool. I am aiming for 9K spirit, but currently only have around 5,400 unbuffed (gonna do my first MGV tomorrow!). Never reforge out of spirit and always reforge into spirit for pieces that don't have any. Also, always gem for spirit.

Mastery: Our next important stat. Always get as much as you can get. There is no such thing as too much mastery.

Crit is always good too, but should not be our main focus right now. Get it where you can, and don't worry when you can't. Mastery is where its at for secondary stats (I consider spirit a primary stat, but it kinda is a secondary stat isn't it?)

I hope this info helps some.

Here is a link to my armory. I am one of the lead healers for my guild, but by no means are we hardcore. That doesn't mean I don't know what I am talking about though 8P.

Most of this information is correct. Spirit is our best stat right now and you should socket for spirit. Mastery and Crit are both very good and powerful secondary stats. I would recommend reforging for Crit in most situations as the HPS is similar and the mana return is a great bonus. Mastery is still very strong though and gearing towards either is viable.

To clear up some confusion, there are two haste soft caps. 871 if you take Ancestral Swiftness and 2017 if you do not. Haste is our weakest stats in terms of HPM and you should reforge out of it as much as you can while staying at whatever cap you are aiming for.

As far as a point to stop gearing towards mastery, there is no magic number of 50%. You can effectively reforge towards full mastery without having to worry about being effected much by DR. At the same time, crit and mastery work well together and I would advise you to keep a balance of both stats.

something worth noting is that crit benefits both throughput and regen while mastery only benefits throughput. Since mana regen is so important at this point, in my eyes it feels like crit is the better option.

Check the maths on EJ. While there may not be DR's as such, mastery beyond 50% is far less useful than crit.

In regard to misinformed info:
Mastery: Our next important stat. Always get as much as you can get. - Wrong
Anyway, level 90 haste should be 2017. - Wrong

I think we're both arguing the same point, and misinformed may have been the wrong term.

In any case if new shaman follow - Spirit > Intellect > Haste (817) > Mastery (50%) > more spirit > Crit, they will be fine.

Out of curiosity, "I am not specced into AS." what did you choose in its place? and do you meet the 12.5% haste soft cap without it?

I chose Elemental Mastery. One thing I learned to rely on last expansion was my T13 haste bonus for casting SWG. This spell is basically the same thing, so I felt it a better choice than AS for me. Haste is so easy to come by and, like I said, we have a 5% haste buff anyway in most of our raids, so I went with it. It really helps a lot in clutch situations where faster casting can sometimes save a situation. I found 2017 haste to be very easy to obtain and I am still reforging out of some haste. I use an addon for reforging called reforgelite. It allows you to put in custom stat weights and caps and does all the math itself. Saves me a LOT of time, and I love it. I highly recommend it if you wanna get the best out of reforging that you possibly can.

In responce to another post in this thread: I feel mastery outweighs crit dispite the mana given back by extra crits for one main reason. That reason is because, when the shit does hit the fan, and you're out of mana, and everyone is taking damage, their health is gonna drop like a rock cause chances are all 3 healers are almost oom. This is where mastery shines. One cast of a riptide or a GHW can bring someone back into the game from next to nothing. And mastery is guaranteed, crit is RNG.

When mastery first became a stat back with patch 4.0 I started running some tests once I hit 85 and started getting gear. I tested out mastery heavy builds and I tested out crit heavy builds. I strongly prefer the mastery heavy build after getting an ok amount of experience with both. Now I will admit I am only going based on how it played and it is my personal preference. Both ways are correct, and it really boils down to playstyle and preference. I feel I personally perform better as a mastery shaman. I've saved situations or prolonged them that I don't think I could have done if I didn't go the way I go. I know I'm not the best shaman in the game, but I take pride in what I do and I love it, and I'm darn good at it too. I can tell Licarius is too.

@zshikara - I would only suggest to you that you are taking a very 4.x approach to the 5.x content. crit is not just about the RNG heal aspect, but also the mana return from resurgence. also, dmg is pretty high in some of these encounters while wearing blues so you may find the "o s*t" benefit of A/S+GHW a game changer in raiding. I would suggest to you that the haste buff is a throughput tool to burn a ton of mana, but something else is probablly wrong if the raid needs that level of mana dumping (beyind CD's) to save them. I personally cannot imagine doing progression with the instant big heal, and the mana from a decent crit value has been huge given the static mana pool.

First of all spirit is by no mean our best stat. It's still intellect our best stat. The fact that you MAY gem spirit has nothing to do with it being our main stat. Second, the more spirit you get the less healing you'll do: your spells are weak, you have low crit/mastery and, after all, spirit is not that great if you really know how much MP5 would give you 1 single point of spirit. Plus, you have to consider WHY you are going oom in the middle of the fight: your tanks use CD to reduce damage? Your raid avoid avoidable damage? You are doing the proper strategy according to the boss mechanic? Are you efficient healing or are you just spamming like a brainless bot?

Let's not forget that spirit has a cap. Yeah, sounds strange but it has a cap. You reach the cap when you are confortable with mana and you drop spirit for intellect. That sounds to me like a cap (like the haste one, like hit/exp for dps, and so on) because if you end the fight with at least 20% mana (hence you are confortable with mana) spirit loose all his value because more spirit won't give you nothing more than mp5 that will go wasted because more mana at the end of the fight doesn't raise your HPS.

I could agree that spirit can be better than intellect the first time you enter a raid and you are 20 ilvl under the optimal gear (something like 460 for MV) but once you know the fights and you get better gear you'll drop spirit for intellect.

So, spirit is not the answer in every case.

Wanna talk about mastery? Let's talk about it. Our mastery is one of the best mastery out there, in my opinion. The only problem is that if you run with 2 healers that keep topping people no matter what your mastery will worth 0. Yeah, 0. So 50%, 70%, 30% mastery will always be too much. Instead, if you run with 2 healers that just keep people alive your mastery will worth like crit, if not more (I'd say more since crit is too RNG to really rely on it). So, I agree with table: you have to balance crit and mastery, according to your raid composition.

I'm not here to teach anyone, that's just my opinion. Just to be clear.

I'm pretty sure that spirit will be a heavy stat, even after you surpass "20 ilvl under the optimal gear (something like 460 for MV)". I'm 473 with 10591 spirit self buffed, and am still able to blow through my pool on heavy healing fights like elegon and feng. This could just be the case in a 25 man setting, but I am sitting very comfortably with about 50% mastery, then moving on to crit.

My Armory*The Afflicted***US-Greymane, 25 man 5/16 HM, US top 100*****Recruiting core spots for almost every class for MoP***

Okey first of all thanks for the replies! Second of all is that the haste cap is really confusing... I have the AS talent atm and with that i have 8.7% haste (1497). Are u guys saying i should drop even more ?

One of the things that strikes me as particularly frustrating, is that the Stickies aren't written from any distinct perspective, yet are based on "maths." Math can't be all variables, if real numbers are to be produced. So, what are those assumptions? 25 mans? 10 mans? 2 healers? 3? 5? 6? Holy pally in group? Resto druid in group?

My healing experience has been that you may be able to use a sticky like ours, as a base, but your raid's healing comp, or a particular fight, may require you to shift away from that base, and sometimes, significantly.

Resto is my OS, and my healing gear is a weak 446 ilvl. When I reforged my haste down to the 1st soft cap, even after a riptide, even with my own 5% haste talent, and even with the raid haste buff (if those even stack), my healing waves felt so slow as to be useless. Granted, I don't like our healing comp. It's been 2 disc priests and a resto shaman, or 2 resto shamans and one disc priest.

That being said, on the night I was healing, I scrapped my previous reforges, out of frustration, and went with my healing gear, as it was - no reforging. I wound up topping the heals in terms of overall healing done, and HPS, and didn't run OOM, before any of the other healers did. So, I can't help but think that a particular fight, and/or a particular raid comp may necessitate a reforge strategy other than the EJ cookie-cutter model.

Then again, to play the Devil's Advocate, we still haven't downed stone guards, so it's not like I'm trying to hold my example can be held up as an argument against the sticky; it's simply that I question whether any one reforge strategy can work for every resto shaman, in any raid size/comp.

Okey first of all thanks for the replies! Second of all is that the haste cap is really confusing... I have the AS talent atm and with that i have 8.7% haste (1497). Are u guys saying i should drop even more ?

Yes. With Ancestral Swiftness you want to drop as close to 817 as you can get.